Basque Nationalist Party - The Spanish Civil War and Franco's Rule

The Spanish Civil War and Franco's Rule

After the coup d'état of 18 July 1936, the party felt torn. It shared the rebel side's Catholicism and there was pressure from the Vatican to keep away from the Republic, but the promised autonomy and their anti-Fascism ideology led them to side with the republican government:

• The Biscayne and Guipuzcoan branches, the more important in number, declared support for the Republic, Democracy and anti-Fascism in the ensuing Spanish Civil War and were key in balancing those provinces to the Republican side.
• In the territory seized by the rebels, PNV members faced tough times:
  • Some members of the Alavese and Navarrese committees, without an official decision, published notes refusing support to the Republic.
  • Some nationalists could flee to France or the Republican area.
  • Some faced the rebel forces, ending in prison or shot.
  • Some joined the Carlist battalions, either out of conviction or to avoid attacks.
  • The repression was focused on leftists, but nationalists were also targeted. The party premises and press were closed in that month of July.

Initially, the Defence Committees in Biscay and Guipuzcoa were dominated by the Popular Front. Although with enough difficulties, Basque autonomy was granted within the Second Spanish Republic and the new Basque Government immediately organized the Basque Army, consisting of militias recruited by each of the political organizations, including PNV.

José Antonio Aguirre, the party leader, became in October 1936 the first lendakari (Basque president) of the wartime multipartite Basque Government, ruling the unconquered parts of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. When Bilbao, the most populated town in the Basque Country, was taken by Franco's troops the Basque nationalists decided to keep untouched all the heavy industries of Bilbao, dedicated to iron and machinery, thinking that they had the responsibility of securing the prosperity of their people in the future. This decision made available to the fascist rebels that important industry. In July 1937, having lost all the Basque territory the Basque army retreated towards Santander. Out of their land and without help from the Republic the Basque Army surrendered to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontari through the so-called Santoña Agreement. The heads of the EAJ-PNV stayed with the soldiers to follow their men's same fate. Prison and executions ordered by the fascists followed. The 'Basque government in exile' then moved to Barcelona until the fall of Catalonia and then out of Spain to the exile, first to France where they organized the camps and services with the president heading it personally. Aguirre was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country and so he started a long travel to Berlin under a false identity.

Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador, Aguirre got to reach Sweden and dodging the SS German intelligence, he arrived to Brazil and Uruguay, where his dignity was reinstated and given visa to New York, where he established under the protection of American-Basques as teacher of Columbia University.

When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952 Aguirre went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also, he learned there that the pro-Nazi French government of Vichy confiscated the Basque Government's building and that the anti-Nazi De Gaulle maintained it as a Spanish Government's possession, given that the Basque Government has never had any international consideration other than representatives of a region in Spain at most. The building today is the Instituto Cervantes premises where French people can learn any of the Spanish languages, including Basque. The president of the Basque Government in exile was always a PNV member and even the sole Spanish representative in the United Nations was the Basque appointee Jesús de Galíndez until his murder in an obscure episode regarding his PhD Thesis about Dominican Republic's dictator Trujillo. He also decided to put the large Basque exiles' network at the service of the Allied side and collaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA during the Cold War to fight Communism in Spanish America.